by Carole Gausden

Street Life: Oh no it isn’t!

Pantomime has proved to be one of the most enduring forms of entertainment for all classes and every age group. There must be something innate about it, because within minutes of the curtain rising on their first theatre visit, the tiniest tot will be calling out “it’s behind you”, like a veteran.

Over the years, small innovations may have crept in, but woe betide companies who ignore sacred panto traditions. One is that the (good) fairy comes on stage from the right, while the (evil) villain always enters from the left. Other conventions are that cross-dressing is mandatory, the dame’s voluminous union jack bloomers must be exhibited at every possible opportunity, and topical or local jokes get the biggest laughs.

Even the wardrobe department has traditions to maintain. Costumes for the finale must be so outrageously fabulous they command rapturous applause when, two by two, the cast enters. Goodies take their bows, hand in hand with baddies, to show that all ill will has been put aside for another year.

Oldham Coliseum pantomime Cinderella 2018.

Panto has proved to be a money spinner, so companies are prepared to push the boat out with costumes, scenery and special effects.

Live animals and local dance troupes go down well, but perhaps the real favourite are the ‘skin roles’ which don’t really exist outside pantomime. An actor named George Conquest built a career around playing animals in panto. The most ambitious of his costumes was an octopus 28 foot wide. Skin roles didn’t seem to do an actor’s career any harm either. Henry Irving once played the wolf in Red Riding Hood, while Charlie Chaplin was the front of a pantomime horse in Stockport.

Panto has enriched the language with words and phrases everyone recognises. Cinderella is shorthand for a drudge, or something unvalued. And we are warned not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The name of an inferior brand of green tea called Widow Twankey would no doubt have disappeared unremarked if it hadn’t been immortalised by Pantomime.

I never went to a lavishly produced extravaganza at a large theatre. I regret not seeing Norman Evans, the ultimate dame in my opinion, when he appeared at the Palace theatre, Manchester in 1952. But that year, without being aware of it, I was taking a tiny part in local panto history.

Queen’s Park Hippodrome on Turkey Lane was our nearest theatre. By the time I was old enough to go, saucy French variety acts had become its normal bill of fare. However, in 1952, there was one last pantomime before the theatre closed altogether, and I was there.

Buttons had us singing along to ‘you push the damper in and pull the damper out and the smoke goes up the chimney just the same’, so I guess it was Cinderella. I was only 5, and my clearest memory is of the long, cold walk home up Church Lane afterwards.

With the exception of that one visit to the Hippodrome, all my childhood pantomime recollections are of amateur productions at St. John’s church hall. What we really loved about it was that, with the exception of the name, nothing ever seemed to change.

Year after year, the pianist’s ‘victory roll’ hair style stayed the same, the Sunday school superintendent played the dame, and the kids you went to school with, were the ‘village folk’.

Sunday school benches formed the front three rows, and they were exclusively for children. Adults were accommodated on chairs behind them.

Our move to New Moston meant I left St. John’s Sunday school when I was nine. That was the minimum age to audition, so 1956’s panto would have been my first.

As a painfully shy, ungainly child, any part I got would have been entirely due to regular Sunday attendance rather than talent.

Despite being devastated at missing my chance to participate, I still looked forward to going to the pantomime as usual. When the curtains opened on the ‘village square’, I was horrified to see that amongst the ‘villagers’, there was a girl from my class at Lily Lane.

She didn’t go to Sunday school in my time, so must have joined just before the audition. How was it that a part, that should rightfully have been mine, went to this interloper?

It might be over sixty years, VH, but don’t think I’ve forgiven you yet…

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by Tricia Beddow

North West Theatre Arts Company – Rent

I’m seated in the front row at NWTAC’s theatre on Lightbowne Road, Moston to see an award winning rock opera called Rent, set in the late 80’s. I have no preconceptions. I know only one song from the show, “525,600 minutes”.

The audience filter in from the bar, get comfy and settle down.

There’s a hush as the lights go down…

The opening scene is set in a cold, bleak attic apartment and the opening number places it in New York – there’s no missing that accent. Mark and Roger can’t afford food nor pay the rent. The storyline follows the two young men and their friends; musicians, dancers, film makers, etc., for one full year.

James Llewellyn Burke and Anthony Horricks – set design by Mark Beaumont

Poverty, drug addiction, sexual orientation, new relationships, lost love and a deadly illness called AIDS all impact on their dreams and aspirations as the year unfolds. 525,600 minutes to be precise.

There’s no spoken dialogue…

It’s a musical! The story-telling ability of the cast is superb. Each song is not just recited it’s delivered with passion, you empathise automatically with each individual character. Whatever anguish or emotions they are experiencing leaves you as sad or happy or crushed or defiant or desperate as they are.

Owen Garcia, played the flamboyant and vivacious Angel Schunard beautifully. He owned the space when he took to the stage and won the heart of Tom Collins, played by Prab Singh. In fact, he won all our hearts.

The multi-talented Anthony Horricks played the mournful musician Roger Davis. He and James Llewellyn Burke, aka Mark Cohen, had a great rapport. They are both powerful singers who worked really well together, with a treat from Anthony’s guitar playing thrown in. Solomon Asante-Owusu conveyed a clean cut, controlled Benny Coffin III and looked every bit the part of a wealthy landlord.

There’s love in the air as well as despair…

Bring on the girls! Mimi is a dancer in a strip club, she’s seductive and sultry but yearns for real love. Maria Collins played her perfectly. Maureen, played by Halle Kerley, is also a performing artist; bi-sexual, risqué and self-assured. She’s rejected Mark to be with the affluent Joanne Jefferson, a lesbian activist, played by Annabelle Cook. Ladies, what would your mother’s say! You all looked and sounded AMAZING.

From left to right: Annabelle, James, Anthony, Owen, Prab, Maria, Halle, Solomon

The vocals were fabulous. The faces on the main line-up says it all. They love what they do.

The supporting cast played anything up to three roles each. They lightened the mood, brought a brighter tone to the dark subjects being portrayed and were really refreshing.

Hats off to Beth Singh, Musical Director. She stepped lightly onto the stage at the end to take a bow on behalf of all the Production Team. It doesn’t happen without them and they thoroughly deserved the applause too.

Next up for NWTAC is A Night at the Cavern Club starring Beth Singh as Cilla Black and featuring hits by The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and more. It runs on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th Feb. Tickets are on sale now but will sell fast so don’t hang about.

Follow NWTAC on Facebook for details of future performances, tickets, offers and updates or click here for NWTAC’s website. You can add your details to the mailing list and get updates straight to your inbox.

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by Carole Gausden

Street Life: The Lane – Part 2 (1890 to 1959)

In the 30 years after Moston’s incorporation into Manchester, education and culture gradually became more accessible to ordinary people, a new transit system was introduced, and a global pandemic arrived.

Named for William Simpson, a silk manufacturer, the Simpson Memorial was a truly local affair. The building was designed by architect Joseph Gibbons Sankey, son of the match manufacturer (of The Lane – Part 1). Opened in 1888, ‘the Simpson’ was initially staffed by volunteers, only becoming part of Manchester’s library service ten years later.

Access to the grounds and library was free to Moston residents, but non-residents had to pay 1 shilling (5p) per year. As well as university extension lectures, there were classes in subjects as diverse as Art and Pitman’s Shorthand. Amateur operatic, drama and horticultural societies were based there, as were camera, bowling and tennis clubs.

In 1899, the foundation stone of Moston Lane School was laid. It was to be the 32nd Manchester Board school, and had places for 1,230 pupils.

On weekdays, the hall of St. George’s Presbyterian Church, Moston Lane, accommodated pupils from a private school. Despite its small size, the standard of education at the grandly named Belmont High school, enabled some girls to win scholarships for Harpurhey High School.

Land to build the Queen’s Park Tram Depot was purchased in 1900. By June 1901, the electric trams were in service. In 1915, trams became the most used form of city transit, and women were taken on to replace the men away fighting at the front

During the post war pandemic, James Niven, Medical Officer of Health, suspended tram services to help prevent the spread of the deadly Spanish Flu.

Strictly speaking, the MIP (or MIPP) was on Hartley Street, a few steps off the Lane. The 925 seat cinema opened its doors in 1920. 19 years later, just a few months before the outbreak of WW2, the Fourways became the Lane’s second cinema.

AVRO and Ferranti’ works were potential targets for the Luftwaffe. To protect their essential war production, four anti-aircraft guns were situated on Broadhurst playing fields.

Many of Moston’s houses lacked gardens, so the Lane’s air raid shelters were generally the indoor Morrison type, or back yard brick and reinforced concrete structures.

Post war

In school holidays, with no park nearby, a trip to the Lane was the best I could hope for. Our circuit started at Simpson Memorial, and while I dashed in to make a speedy library book exchange, Mum waited outside with my sister’s pram,

Fifties austerity must have left six-year-olds with simple expectations, because I recall being impressed by a shop window containing a currant cake, apparently baked in a fancy jelly mould.

And I enjoyed watching the endlessly revolving model of a foot and calf wearing a sheer nylon stocking, in the haberdasher’s window.

There was an Airfix model of the queen’s coronation coach in the toy shop. It added a touch of topicality to the display of smashing Chad Valley sets and the usual board games.

My absolute favourite shop window belonged to a hairdresser. With mirrors representing lakes, and dozens of the small glass animals popular at the time, someone had created a magical fantasy world which changed regularly enough to keep me going back time after time.

Before turning for home down Ashley Lane, there was one final stop to be made. I was just tall enough to see over the wall of the front garden of what I called the ‘gnome house’. There was a wishing well surrounded by ornamental woodland creatures and colourful gnomes.

If there had been the ‘best in Lane’ award, it should have gone to a shop with no window display to speak of. It was where my friends and I headed after our Saturday morning swim at Harpurhey Baths. Faint from hunger, we pooled the last of our coppers, and went into the little shop for a generously filled paper bag of broken biscuits to share on the way home. No biscuit has ever tasted as good since.

    I used to travel home from school on the bus between the Ben Brierley and Gardeners Arms. On those journeys I first recall noticing there were some bits of Moston that seemed out of time amongst the urban sprawl.

    Logically, I knew the Lane had ‘a past’, but where did Yeb Fold fit in? In those days, the cottages wouldn’t have looked out of place as an illustration in a book of country folklore. And how come in 1958, there was a herd of cows grazing in a field surrounded by modern semis, only a few feet from the bus window.

    Curiosity led me on to discover ‘Billy Buttonhole’, a silk weaver living on the Lane in 1841 (see part 1). Strange to think that had he lived in the same place 100 years later, rather than weaving silk by hand, Billy might have been producing Lancaster bombers or radar at Ferranti’s.

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